


What Was Before

by AKA_47



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 00:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2752496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AKA_47/pseuds/AKA_47
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's never the physical pain that hurts the most, it's the insults slung as easily as breathing. They find their way in, change your life. No one is immune, not Will and not Mackenzie. A confrontation with Pruitt prompts Will to ask Mac about her dating past, and though he can't protect her from what's already been, he can make sure that it never happens again. Post 3.05</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Was Before

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go, a fan fiction where no one dies! It's like a miracle for me. I'm not exactly ignoring that Charlie died. This is Mac's first day back since her near firing and Charlie's death, but I pushed aside their feelings about him so they can focus on this stuff instead. Hope you enjoy.

He grabbed her arm and towed her out of the elevator. His grip was firm, but not painful, and she sure as hell wasn’t scared of Pruitt, but she’d be damned if she was going to let that idiot drag her across _her_ newsroom so that he could flaunt his superiority.

“Get the fuck out of my building.” Pruitt said, just as Mac jerked out of his grip.

“Don’t touch me.” She said it loud and clear to be sure that the whole bullpen would hear, “or security will be up here to escort you out of ‘your’ building.”

She infused as much sarcasm into the words as she could and Pruitt lunged forward, jabbing his finger angrily in her direction. She couldn’t help the smug smile that flit across her face. He didn’t dare touch her.

“Just because you were Charlie Skinner’s little bitch,” Pruitt was practically hissing the words and Mac could feel herself turning red, but she was sure that it was nothing compared to the fire engine hue he was now sporting, “does not mean that you’re mine. Get. Out.”

Mac drew herself to her full height, taking complete advantage of her heels, and glared mercilessly at Pruitt.

“Everything okay over here?” It was Don. He stepped up next to Mac, looking very much like he was suppressing the urge to roll up his sleeves.

“Fine.” Mac let her gaze flit away from Pruitt’s to see that the whole bullpen had paused. Will was standing right behind her, his eyes far away. _How long had he been listening?_

She turned back to Pruitt, dropping her voice low, “I wear ‘bitch’ like a badge of honor. It means that I won’t shut up, I won’t stop, and I certainly won’t take orders from someone like you. I’m the executive producer of _News Night._ I belong in the newsroom. Shouldn’t you be off tweeting or something?”

She didn’t wait for his reaction. She wheeled around, accompanied by an eruption of applause from the bullpen, and strode purposefully to her office. It was only when she had closed the door and sagged against it that she allowed herself to unclench her fists and examine her shaking hands. She had fingernail gouges in her palms.

She took a deep breath, feeling the flush in her cheeks cool. “Okay, then.” She brushed her hands on her skirt and collapsed into her chair, tilting her head back and shutting her eyes. She sensed Will come in rather than saw him. “He’ll fire me anyway,” she said by way of greeting.

“Mac.” His voice sounded strained and she sat up. Will was looking at her, but not seeing her. She’d seen him like this before, on those rare occasions when he told her about his childhood. She could tell that for the moment he was lost in memories, just like she sometimes found herself back in Islamabad even when she knew she was safe in her apartment. Memories are strange scars, faded, but always right there, ready to make themselves known.

“Sit down,” she coaxed in a quiet voice. He obeyed automatically, blinking and forcing himself to smile at her.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to help you.” There was a note of apology in his voice that she waved away.

“I know.”

Will shook his head. “No, I should have. I wanted to. No one should put their hands on you. He shouldn’t get away with speaking to you like…”

And Mac understood. He’d confessed to her that he’d thought a lot about his dad all those long days in solitary, his dad who evoked in Will the need to protect. She stood up, leaning against the desk as she took his hands in both of hers. “He wasn’t going to hurt me.” She assured him. “Guys like Pruitt like to talk, like to call names, makes them feel important.” Weak men, ignorant men, men who were terrified of intelligence. Even when he was filled with nothing but anger toward her, Will had never called Mac names.

“Words hurt too, Mac.” He spoke so plainly that it broke her heart. She knew that. She knew the doubt that words could foster, how they could chip at you slowly so that you didn’t even know they had changed you until it was too late. She also knew that Will had taken a punch or two. He could defend himself against that. But it wasn’t the bruises, the cuts, scrapes, the broken bones that hurt him, it was the words. His father’s insults had driven him straight to law school, just so he could try to rid himself of the twisted nursery rhyme of his childhood: _dumbass, useless, piece of shit_ , the repetitive echo that couldn’t be lost by memorizing case law or writing speeches or doing the news. Mackenzie knew what motivated Will. She’d learned long ago that much as she might try, she couldn’t fix it.

“Brian hurt you, didn’t he?” Will broke Mac out of her reverie and sent her straight to panic. She shifted uncomfortably, letting go of his hand to tuck her hair nervously behind her ear.

“He never hit me.”

“Said every emotionally abused woman in history. That’s not what I asked.” He leveled her with his eyes and she felt the blush creep into her cheeks again. “I was standing there listening to you argue with Pruitt,” he spoke through her silence, “and it was so clear that you didn’t need my help, and I love that about you, Mac, I do, but you weren’t used to _nice,_ Mac, and I should have known back then…”

Mackenzie twisted her wedding ring around her finger, and it wasn’t hard to remember the time before it was there, when she had just met Will and the breakup with Brian was so fresh that she could still hear his angry rants reverberating in her skull. Her experience up to that point had taught Mac that you couldn’t be smart, driven _and_ have a good track record with relationships. Brian wasn’t the first to treat her badly and it wasn’t like she didn’t _know_ that she deserved better, not like she didn’t like herself. Men liked her too, or they seemed to at first. But she lived for school, and later work, and she stumbled through more than one relationship exhausted and at her wit’s end, and so damn tired of dumb questions. She wasn’t always very nice. They weren’t always very nice back. It was like a game after a while: _endure, withstand, prove that you can do this too_. Because if there was one thing Mackenzie couldn’t stand it was failure. So, because Mackenzie was not going to be the one to give up, she learned. She learned to shout back, learned to say “no” with enough force to make sure that they knew just how serious she was and what she would do if they ignored it.

After all of that, all those moronic men whose eyes glazed over when she talked, Brian had seemed like an improvement. He was smart. He listened to her, but he never really understood. He just wanted her to _relax_ , to care less about the world, the news, and more about him. He hated her quick tongue, hated that she loved to win arguments, and often did. She threatened him. She’d known it pretty early on. She should have taken it as her cue to abandon ship, but she was so _tired_ of the game. She was tired of being lonely and coming home to an empty apartment, of having no one to share her stories with. So, she dealt with the fact that he was always trying to knock her down a peg.

Mac was not impressionable little girl. She knew that she was bright and good at her job, she even knew that she should ignore all the harsh things that he swore at her, but the words found their way in anyway. Somehow she convinced herself that it was constructive criticism. Told herself that she could reach his standard, that he was trying to make her better, that what he gave her was love. And when he tossed her aside after dragging her down… No, she wasn’t used to it when Will was nice to her. She was even surprised when he didn’t try to change her. He had never seen the flaws that Brian had been so fond of pointing out. He thought she was perfect. She had never been anyone’s idea of perfect. She didn’t think that he had ever noticed the doubt that crept in when he complimented her. She thought she hid it well.

She’d never wanted to burden Will with any of it. He couldn’t fix her past any more than she could fix his. She knew that he was sensitive about that sort of thing, that no matter how much she tried to convince him that her experience wasn’t even a fraction of what most women went through, he would worry about it, about her. What was the point of drudging up the past? She steadfastly ignored the little voice in the back of her mind that told her that that kind of thinking was what she was always berating Will for. It mattered. Being open and honest mattered.

“It’s all right.” Mac folded her arms tight across her chest, casting her gaze to the floor.

“It’s not.” He whispered, vehement, prying her arms loose and holding them. “Look at me.” His voice was still soft, but just as insistent. She felt her eyes burning. The patch of carpet she’d been staring at had started to blur. She lifted her head, blinking furiously.

“It’s not okay. What Pruitt just did is not okay. What Brian did is not okay and I should have noticed.”

Mac scoffed at that. Her answering laugh trembled a little with unshed tears. “It was years ago, Will. You barely knew me. How could you have known?”

Will raised his eyebrows. “Because I have no experience with that kind of thing,” he said sardonically. Will stood up and Mac took the opportunity to lean her forehead against his chest. He dropped a kiss into her hair.

“Will?” She spoke into his shirt.

“Mhm?”

It was the kind of answer that was felt rather than heard, and she smiled at the fact that she could be so close to him after spending so many days apart. She still marveled at the idea that she was allowed to touch him again. “I really am fine.”

“I know you are. It’s a hard habit to break.”

She looked up to see that his eyes were on her. “Protecting? Or the guilt?” He gave her a smile that told her she knew him too well.

“Both.” He admitted.

He touched his lips to hers lightly, quickly, like he would do it for the rest of his life, and the simplicity of it made her head spin. Mac perched herself on the edge of the desk as he turned to go, still feeling the ghost of a kiss.

“Will?”

He paused with his hand on the door, turning back to face her.

“I know you don’t have to protect me, but it’s really nice to know that you will.”

He looked at her, really looked at her, and Mac felt that there was nothing more truthful in the world than the love she saw in those eyes. They said more than any words, were enough to erase memories of Brian and Pruitt and any other idiot who had ever felt the need to belittle her, at least for a moment.

“Always,” Will said as he left, looking considerably more light hearted than when he’d come in.

Mac sighed. She needed to get ready for the rundown and probably prepare for a battle with Pruitt. She was just skimming her emails when Maggie flew in. “News alert.” She said in answer to Mac’s questioning glance.

“Tell me.” Mac instructed, already hurdling around the desk and out to the bullpen. Tomorrow she might not have a job, but today she was still executive producer of _News Night with Will McAvoy_ and there was work to be done. She could, she _would_ , weather the storm tomorrow. She was strong. She was determined. But most of all, she wasn’t alone.


End file.
